GARIBALDI'S DILEMMA.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1014, 21 July 1879, Page 2

GARIBALDI'S DILEMMA.

The difficulties that may beset the children of Garibaldi in the settlement of his , estate after his death are being discussed by the Italian journals, which, with tlu->ir • usual fondness for hyperbole, describe the • heroic old general as a fath.-.r whose chi]- . dren are not his, o.v«, and a liasband without a wifii, Garibaldi has six ehil- ' dren, Titev are the offspring of three women, with only two of whom lis has lived, yet, strangely, it was o.'.ily to the , woman with whom ho iiever cohabited that he was married. At tlie time of his contest against the Dictator Rosas, in La Plata, he met a woman of Brazilian birth called Auaita. She was married, but ialling in love with the adventurer, she left her husI band, and after accompanying Garibaldi through his most perilous experiences in South America she followed him to Europe. She was the mother of Garibaldi's three oldest children, Menotti, Ricciotti, and Mine. Canzio. She died in the forest of ' Ravenna, when Garibaldi was fioeiiig from 1 Rome, after the arrival there of the French troops in 1849, Te.il years later, at the time of his campaign in Lombardy, Garibaldi met the youthful daughter of the Marquis l-asniondi. This damsel loved unwisely one of Garibaldi's aides-de-camp, a young oiiicer named Coufrimi. When the Italian troops moved away frc-.m, Oomo, her father's home, slip determined to follow her lover. She went after him on horseback, and her father went j after lior. When the Marquis found her shei told him she had conceived for Garibaldi a passion she could not govern. Garibaldi was informed of this declaration, and, as he was pleased with the girl, he married her. The marriage ceremony was little more than over when, the young woman informed her husband that she loved his aide-cl;.-e<uiip, Gonfrimi; that ' here was a good reason why he should be her husband, and that she had lied to her father when she told him she loved Garibaldi, because she was afraid to tell him she loved Coufrimi, to. whom he felt certain he would never let her bo married. Garibaldi solved the difficulty thus raised by leaving his young wife at once. He is said by some never to have seen her again. Others assert that several years later she called on him and implored him to take her as his wife in fact. A few months after her marriage to him she gave birth to a child, now living, of whom Sig. Confrimi was the real father. When the veteran revolutionist retired to Capro.ra, after the struggle of Aspromqnie, his daughter, Mine. Canzio, accompanied him. As she was on tba eve of accouchment, she took with her a nurse named FranCGsca, This woman carc.d tenderly for Garibaldi in his sickness. One morning he summoned his daughter and said to her, " You nv.tse get another nurse for infaiit, From this day forward Franeesca will be one of the family, and will eat with us." A very short time later Francesca became a mother. She has since had two children, One of her children is dead. The others—Menlio and Clelia—are now in Rome with Garibaldi and Francesca. These two being illegitimate, and the offspring of Annua being illegitimate, the Italian journals contemplate with interest the fact that Garibaldi's only lawful child is the offspring of the daughter of the Marquis Basmondi, with whom he never cohabitated. This is the marriage .lie is now seeking to have < annulled.